San Sebastian Kicks Off Star-Studded Showcase With World Premiere of Erotic Feature ‘Emmanuelle’

The 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival is underway after the world premiere of Audrey Diwan‘s racy flick Emmanuelle kicked off the festivities in Spain.

The film, which boasts stars such as Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Naomi Watts (Mullholland Drive, Birdman), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) and Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), is inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s erotic novel. Chacha Huang and Anthony Wong round out the cast, all of whom, barring Watts, appeared briefly onstage before the showing at the city’s Kursaal Theater.

The director’s project centers around a woman, Emmanuelle (Merlant), on a business trip to Hong Kong working with a luxury hotel group. Searching for a lost pleasure, she seeks her arousal in experiences with some of the hotel’s guests. One of them, Kei (Sharpe), seems to constantly elude her. Diwan has said the script was conceived as an exploration of eroticism in the post-#MeToo era.

The French filmmaker, who co-wrote Emmanuelle with Rebecca Zlotowski, won Venice’s prestigious Golden Lion in 2021 for her film Happening. It marks one of San Sebastian Film Festival‘s glitziest-ever lineups, with honors for Cate Blanchett, Javier Bardem and Pedro Almodóvar on the week’s agenda here on the Spanish coast.

Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, The Room Next Door, premiered to a whopping 17-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. The Spaniard dutifully thanked the crowd as the film’s stars, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, stood with him.

San Sebastian has also picked up some heavy hitters ahead of awards season with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s We Live in Time closing the fest, as well as screenings of Edward Berger’s Conclave, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and Sean Baker’s Anora.

Neon has been announced to be circling U.S. distribution rights. Emmanuelle will get its theatrical release in France on Sept. 25 by Pathé.